The Justice Dept.’s probe into Apple is expanding to include how the iPhone and iPad maker does business with media outfits in areas beyond music, The Post has learned.

According to several sources, the Justice Dept. has contacted a handful of the country’s biggest media and technology companies to get their views on Apple, which, after years of casting itself as the tiny outsider, has become an 800-pound gorilla calling the shots in several arenas.

“The [Justice Dept.] is doing outreach,” said one Hollywood industry source. “You can’t dictate terms to the industry. The Adobe thing is just inviting the wrath of everybody.”

Added a senior source at a media company: “If Apple thinks it’s going to increase its monopoly with the iPad, it should look at the history of other walled gardens.”

The term “walled gardens” refers to a service or technology that restricts access only to those using that service, as is the case with Apple’s iTunes, in which music can only be played on Apple devices or through iTunes itself.

With the iPad, Apple has been criticized by Big Media for banning Adobe’s Flash, the Web’s most popular video software, from being used on the device.

Justice had no comment. The agency already is poking around Apple’s music business, reaching out to music-label executives and Internet start-ups about whether iTunes is anti-competitive.

That particular line of inquiry focuses on a dispute with Amazon and its ability to secure exclusive release deals with the labels.

Further, as The Post reported this month, the Justice Dept. also is asking questions about the terms that Apple lays out for computer programmers who want to develop apps for the iPad.

The feds’ interest in Hollywood comes as executives at several media giants are turning their backs on retooling their content to make them iPad friendly, favoring instead to use technology that gives the content as wide an exposure as possible. claire.atkinson@nypost.com